Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima Trailer (1986)

They are known throughout the world “the artists of the atomic bomb,” the Japanese husband and wife muralists, and ‘Toshi Maruki. Their collaborative relationship is unique: one paints a painfully detailed vision of the victims of the atomic blast; the other conceals the carefully delineated brush strokes with a grey-black ink “wash.” The first artist restates the specifics of the image; the second re-conceals. Through the repetition of this process, the work emerges. The subject of Hellfire is so painful, so fraught with implications for our collective fate, that one would expect a film that is unwatchable. The success of the film, however, is born of its subjects strengths, a delicate balance of memory and compassion. Gold Prize, 1986 Competition for Films on Japan; Interfilm Award, 1986, Mannheim Film Festival.

In this adaptation of Umberto Eco's best-selling novel, 14th-century Franciscan monk William of Baskerville and his young novice arrive at a conference to find that several monks have been murdered under mysterious circumstances.